With the development of mobile network service and automatic control technologies, the Machine Type Communication (abbreviated as MTC) mode emerges. The MTC is also referred to as Machine to Machine (abbreviated as M2M) communication mode, in which both parties of the communication are machine devices.
In the M2M communication, the communication activity is controlled automatically, i.e. the initiation and termination of the communication and the control of some access and limitation during communication are all automatic activity. Such activities reply upon the constraint and control of the machine (i.e. terminals in M2M communication) activities in M2M communication. The activities of the terminal in the M2M communication are restrained by the service subscription data, and the network manages the terminal in M2M communication according to the service subscription data.
The most typical communication mode in Machine Type Communication is the communication between the terminal and the application server, wherein the terminal is referred to as MTC user equipment (MTC UE) and the application server is referred to as MTC server.
In the 2G/3G/LTE access network, the M2M communication mainly takes the packet service (abbreviated as PS) network as the underlying bearer network to realize the service layer communication between the MTC user equipment and the MTC server. In particular, the M2M communication entity can access the evolved packet system (abbreviated as EPS) network via the evolved universal mobile telecommunications system terrestrial radio access network (abbreviated as E-UTRAN), and can also can access the general packet radio service (abbreviated as GPRS) via the GSM/EDGE radio access network (abbreviated as GERAN)/UTRAN network. FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of the architecture of an M2M communication entity accessing the EPS according to the related art. As shown in FIG. 1, the MTC server can serve as the application function (abbreviated as AF) and connect to the policy and charging rules function entity (abbreviated as PCRF) via an Rx interface, so as to realize the control of the bearer. In addition, the MTC server can serve as the SIP AS and connect to the home subscriber server (abbreviated as HSS) via a Sh interface, so as to access the application service data.
In FIG. 1, the MTC UE access the EPS network via the E-UTRAN (eNodeB). After an IP address is allocated thereto, the MTC UE can establish an IP channel with the MTC server so as to realize the upper layer service communication with the MTC server. The IP channel established between the MTC UE and the MTC server can be a logical IP channel, the physical path of which passes through: eNodeB, serving gateway (abbreviated as S-GW or SGW), and packet data network gateway (abbreviated as PDN GW, or P-GW, or PGW).
In the practical application, the MTS server needs to monitor the running state of the MTC UE so as to dynamically and timely learn the current state of the MTC UE and the changes of the state of the MTC UE. In this case, the state change of the MTC UE may include: the MTC UE de-attaches from the network, the MTC UE enters a non-connection state, the MTC UE release the wireless connection, and the current position of the MTC UE changes, etc. All these state changes of the MTC UE can be referred to as an MTC event. The MTC event to be monitored can be defined in the MTC subscription data of the home location register (abbreviated as HLR)/HSS, and sent to the serving general packet radio service support node (abbreviated as SGSN)/MME by the HLR/HSS according to the flow of the MTC UE attaching to the network. However, as to the detection of the MTC event, it usually has to be done by the network entity of the core network. For example, in the EPS network, the network element responsible for detecting the MTC event can be MME/SGW/PGW and so on, and in the GPRS network, the network element responsible for detecting the MTC event can be the SGSN/gateway GPRS support node (abbreviated as GGSN) and so on. After an MTC event has been detected, usually it has to be reported to the MTC server so that the MTC server can timely learn the running condition of the MTC UE.
In the related art, a reporting solution that takes the MME/SGSN as the MTC event detection entity or the GGSN/PGW as the MTC event detection entity is provided.
In this case, if the MME/SGSN is used as the MTC event detection entity, when the current MME/SGSN detects the occurrence of an MTC event, before MTC GW sends the MTC event reported to the MTC server, the MME/SGSN can send the MTC event report to the MTC GW by the following ways: (1) if there is a direct interface between the SGSN/MME and the MTC GW, then the SGSN/MME is used as an MTC event execution entity to directly send the MTC event report to the MTC GW; (2) the SGSN/MME sends the MTC event report to the GGSN/PGW using a GTP-C message with the GGSN/SGW/PGW, and the GGSN/PGW, as the MTC event reporting entity, sends the MTC event report to the MTC GW using a MTCi interface with the MTC GW; and (3) the SGSN/MME sends the MTC event report to the GGSN/PGW using the GTP-C message, and the GGSN/PGW sends the MTC event report to the PCRF using the Gx interface with the PCRF, and the PCRF, as the MTC event reporting entity, sends the MTC event report to the MTC GW using the Rx interface with the MTC GW.
When the GGSN/PGW is the MTC event detection entity, if the GGSN/PGW currently detects the occurrence of an MTC event, before MTC GW sends the MTC event reported to the MTC server, the GGSN/PGW can send the MTC event report to the MTC GW by the following two ways: (1) the GGSN/PGW, as the event report entity, sends the MTC event report to the MTC GW using the MTCi interface with the MTC GW; and (2) the GGSN/PGW sends the MTC event report to the PCRF using the Gx interface with the PCRF, and the PCRF, as the event report entity, sends the MTC event report to the MTC GW using the Rx interface with the MTC GW.
The inventors have found that in the related art when the MTC event detection entity reports the MTC event report, it is not designated which MTC server the MTC event report is to be sent to, which causes that the MTC event report is sent to a wrong MTC server, and then causes that the MTC server cannot effectively monitor the MTC UE.